


A Flower by Any Other Name

by LadyNightingGaleofMilvania



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Might add more tags, One Shot, Sadness, Sprint Fic, no beta we die like men, tragic past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-03
Updated: 2018-07-03
Packaged: 2019-06-04 17:52:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15152486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyNightingGaleofMilvania/pseuds/LadyNightingGaleofMilvania
Summary: Iris finally gets an answer about her mother.





	A Flower by Any Other Name

“Daddy?” Iris asked, looking at her salad without really seeing it.

“Yes, Iris?” Clarus answered as he cut into his steak and placed a piece in his mouth.

“What was mom like?”

The room went silent and still. Clarus stopped his chewing and Gladiolus froze with his whole steak halfway to his mouth, eyes flickering between his sister and father. The older Shield finished chewing his bite before placing the silverware on his plate.

“You never talk about her, nobody ever does…” Iris continued, pushing one of the small grape tomatoes around on a piece of lettuce. “I wanna know, my birthday is tomorrow and all you ever told me was it’s the day she died.”

The tension in the room was thick and Gladio ended up setting his steak back on the half-eaten plate of food, pushing it away from sudden lack of hunger. She’d asked before when she was small, and Clarus had always been able to deflect the question, but now that she was turning 14 brushing the question aside was getting harder and harder…

“Meet me in my study after you finish your dinner.” Clarus said simply before taking his plate with him to finish his food in bitter silence.

When the knock sounded Clarus took the picture on his desk into his hands, tracing the woman on there holding a tiny baby with a black floof of hair before sighing. There was no more pushing it off, no more avoiding it.

Today he faced his daemons.

“Come in.”

Iris stepped into the study and closed the door silently behind her. Clarus motioned to the seat across from his desk and she sat down, watching him as he passed her the picture.

“Iris… this is your mother, Dahlia. She was… very special to me…” Clarus began, his voice feeling as heavy as the invisible weight pressing down upon him.

“I know, daddy. Mom’s picture is on the mantel over the fireplace.” Iris replied, looking at the picture he hand given to her.

Her mother had been beautiful, with long black hair and amber eyes that seemed to sparkle like diamonds in each captured moment. Iris knew that the baby in the picture had to be her older brother Gladio and that there were no pictures that existed of her and her mother together, unless you counted the ones that were when she had been pregnant.

“Your mother… she was an amazing woman with many talents,” Clarus allowed himself a smile, “One of them being cheerful, even on hard times… You often remind me of her.”

“R-really?” Iris asked, eyes wide.

Clarus only chuckled, “Yes, she also loved to bake sweets just like you.”

The girl smiled back down at the picture for a moment before looking back up, the smile lessened, “What happened?”

Clarus’ chest tightened as he remembered all too vividly of the events and his small smile he had allowed turned into a pained, grim line on his face. His voice broke.

“When your mother told me she was pregnant again I was overjoyed, we had been trying for 6 years before we finally got you… But the pregnancy was difficult, problem after problem. At one point…” Clarus stopped to swallow the lump in his throat that refused to go down, making the act of talking harder. “At one point we thought we had lost you.”

Iris felt tears pickle at the edge of her eyes. She had never seen her father in so much pain, she had also never heard him speak so openly.

“We found out a few weeks later that you were fine, but your mother was so worried from there on out. She’d monitor what she ate, sit down more, refuse to pick up anything over a certain weight… Eventually she ended up bedridden because of pain as her health declined. Her only concern was your health, even as we were told that you were too small, or that you were refusing to move into the correct position. She continued to pray to the Astrals that you would be born healthy and full of life, and I prayed that you would both be ok.”

“She wasn’t ok though…” Iris said with a sinking heart, looking her father in the eye and her stomach churned at the tears running down his cheeks.

“No, she wasn’t…” her father whispered, “By the end she was put into the hospital and monitored around the clock. One of my biggest regrets is not having been there with her more. You had begun to take more and more from her, she was never mad ‘She doesn’t know what she’s doing, she’s just a baby’ your mother would say. The labor and delivery was even harder, at one point they had lost your heartbeat and it was made all the worse that you were breach, she started losing so much blood…” Clarus stopped, unable to continue, to look his daughter in the eye. His daughter that looked so much like her mother…

“Mom had signed a DNR and refused to let them do anything like a blood transfusion.” Gladiolus said from the doorway, voice flat and matter-of-fact. “She got to hold you and the last thing she said was ‘My beautiful little girl, Iris’. She was so happy. She was smiling when she passed.”

Gladio crossed his arms over his chest and looked sadly at their father whose shoulders had stiffened and sat with his hands fisted in his hair. After a few deep breaths he looked back up, eye rimmed red and nose slightly running.

“The King was kind enough to give me some time off to be with the two of you, especially with you being so young.” Clarus looked at Iris who had begun to get misty herself, but held herself back. It was in these moments that her mother shined through most, “She would be so proud of the young woman you have blossomed into.”


End file.
